Part 17 (1/2)
Past the veranda filed the twenty priceless sheep, and on to the paddock.
”I suppose they'll carry off all the prizes at the fair, won't they?”
asked the Mistress civilly, as McGillicuddy plodded past her at the tail of the procession.
”Aiblins, aye,” grunted McGillicuddy, with the exquisite courtesy of a member of his race and cla.s.s who feels he is being patronized.
”Aiblins, aye. Aiblins, na'. Aiblins--ugh-uh.”
Having thus safeguarded his statement against a.s.sault from any side at all, the Scot moved on. Lad strolled down toward the paddock to superintend the task of locking up the sheep. The Mistress did not detain him. She felt calmly certain her order of ”Leave them alone!”
had rendered the twenty visitors inviolate from him.
Lad walked slowly around the paddock, his gaze on the sheep. These were the first sheep he had ever seen. Yet his ancestors, for a thousand years or more, had herded and guarded flocks on the moors.
Atavism is mysteriously powerful in dogs, and it takes strange forms. A collie, too, has a queer strain of wolf in him--not only in body but in brain, and the wolf was the sheep's official murderer, as far back as the days when a humpbacked Greek slave, named aesop, used to beguile his sleepless nights with writing fables.
Round and round the paddock prowled Lad; his eyes alight with a myriad half-memories; his sensitive nostrils quivering at the scents that enveloped them.
McGillicuddy, from time to time, eyed the dog obliquely, and with a scowl. These sheep were not the pride of his heart. His conscientious heart possessed no pride--pride being one of the seven deadly sins, and the sheep not being his own; but the flock represented his livelihood--his comfortably overpaid job with the Wall Street Farmer.
He was responsible for their welfare.
And McGillicuddy did not at all like the way this beautiful collie eyed the prize merinos, nor was the Scot satisfied with the strength of the corral. Its wire fencing was rusty and sagging from long disuse, its gate hung crookedly and had a crazy hasp.
A sheep is one of the least intelligent creatures on earth. Should the flock's leader decide at any time during the night to press his heavy bulk against the gate or against some of the rustier wire strands, there would presently be a gap through which the entire twenty could amble forth. Once outside----
Again McGillicuddy glowered dourly at Lad. The collie returned the look with interest; a well-bred dog being as skilled in reading human faces as is any professional dead beat. Lad saw the dislike in McGillicuddy's heavy-thatched eyes; cordially he yearned to prove his own distaste for the shepherd, but the Mistress' command had immuned this sour stranger.
So Lad merely turned his back on the man, sat down, flattened his furry ears close against his head, thrust his pointed nose skyward, and sniffed. McGillicuddy was too much an animal man not to read the insult in the dog's posture and action, and the shepherd's fist tightened longingly round his staff.
Half an hour later the Wall Street Farmer himself arrived at The Place. He came in a runabout. On the seat beside him sat his pasty-faced, four-year-old son. At his feet was something which, at first glance, might have been either a quadruped or a rag bag.
The Mistress and the Master, with dutiful hypocrisy, came smilingly out on the veranda to welcome the guests. Lad, who had returned from the impromptu sheep-fold, stood beside them. At sight and scent of this new batch of visitors the collie doubtless felt what old-fas.h.i.+oned novelists used to describe as ”mingled emotions.”
There was a child in the car. And though there had been few children in Lad's life, yet he loved them, loved them as a big-hearted and big-bodied dog always loves the helpless. Wherefore, at sight of the child, Lad rejoiced.
But the animal crouching at the Wall Street Farmer's feet was quite a different form of guest. Lad recognized the thing as a dog--yet no such dog as ever he had seen. An unwholesome-looking dog. Even as the little boy was an unwholesome-looking child.
”Well!” sonorously proclaimed the Wall Street Farmer as he scrambled out of the runabout and bore down upon his hosts, ”here I am! The sheep got here all safe? Good! I knew they would. McGillicuddy's a genius; nothing he can't do with sheep. You remember Mortimer?”
lifting the lanky youngster from the seat. ”He teased so to come along, his mother said I'd better bring him. I knew you'd be glad. Shake hands with them, Morty, darling.”
”I wun't!” snarled Morty darling, hanging back.
Then he caught sight of Lad. The collie came straight up to the child, grinning from ear to ear, and wrinkling his nose so delightedly that every white front tooth showed. Morty flung himself forward to greet the huge dog, but the Wall Street Farmer, with a shout of warning, caught the boy in his arms and bravely interposed his own fat body between Mortimer and Lad.
”What does the beast mean by snarling at my son?” fiercely demanded the Wall Street Farmer. ”You people have no right to leave such a savage dog at large.”
”He's not snarling,” the Mistress indignantly declared, ”he's smiling. That's Lad's way. Why, he'd let himself be cut up into squares sooner than hurt a child.”
Still doubtful, the Wall Street Farmer cautiously set down his son on the veranda. Morty flung himself bodily upon Lad; hauling and mauling the stately collie this way and that.